Dating, Round 1: Silence

Well, after a couple of weeks at this, nothing has happened.

I joined e-harmony for the reason that rather than my randomly picking someone who looked cute, they would match me with some discrimation. And right away there were a bunch (8?) matches, because there's thousand of people in there already and I'm just me. Unfortunately, a lot of the matches were out of state. So I closed a bunch and sent off the first step to 3 guys.

Silence.

They didn't even check out my profile, so it's not like I was rejected. More like they aren't actively there.

Got a match a few days later. I'm open-minded about many things (or trying to be), but a 5'2" would just be ridiculous. Sorry.

Got another match a few days thereafter - lives in Puyallup! Hey! He did look at my profile, and I sent the first questions but... silence.

And I'll say this as a pet peeve: you can say you want a guy who doesn't want kids, but you can't say you want a guy who doesn't HAVE kids. And the vast majority have kids. It would take unusual circumstances for me to do the stepmother thing again. But I'm willing to at least check it out before running away... see, I'm trying to be open-minded. :)

More tales to come...

Today was an anxious day.

Yes, today was a good day. But I also sent an email to a friend:

I turn 37 in three days, and I'm much disturbed by the gray hairs along my hairline. It's not like they'll get smaller, or shorter... I'm too young for this! Actually, a friend from jr. high who turned up on facebook said I looked much the same as I did when I was younger, which was gratifying - I don't think I look anywhere near 37, aren't people like that old? I don't feel as old as I thought I should to be this old, either.

I've been contemplating dyeing my hair again, which is abhorrent, as I've only recently finally grown out all the old dye. But the gray hair thing really does freak me out. My mom was totally gray by 45 (and at the rate these are coming, I'm not hoping for much better)... and has proceeded to use home dye kits for the last many years. Unfortunately, it usually leaves her hair an odd shade of purpleish-brown. Once it was pink. Sometimes you gotta give in and pay the professionals...

Anyway. 37! It's not old, but some part of me is going, damn, you're almost 40! What the hell?

Today was a good day.

Well, there's nothing like a good health scare to throw you off track and make you work to get it back.

Speaking of work, I didn't exactly cover myself in glory last year. Some of it was totally understandable (during radiation) and some of it just felt like I'd never get back to my normal self. I had a come-to-jesus meeting August, and since then had at least climbed back on the project management side of things; and more recently I've felt like I'm getting the analytical side of things back again.

On the upside, a year in which raises are getting postponed is a good year to have an off-time... because it didn't affect my pay increase! But I'd never run my work that way intentionally.

Today I went to Toastmasters and had a couple of roles. Our grammarian, at the end of meeting mentioned that I "shone" today: monkey's uncle, uglier than sin, and - his favorite - "personal peccadillo." He wanted to know if you could get that at a mexican restaurant. Of the 4 phrases he identified, three of them were mine. Sweet!

Went back to my desk and prepped a two o'clock (recurring) meeting that has previously been the site of me definitely falling down on the job. To my delight, the team I was working with was off and running so much that it took quite a bit just to keep up, but it was an extraordinarily productive meeting and made me look great. My boss actually complimented me highly after the meeting, and I said, "I'm BACK!" That's probably still not entirely true, but I'm definitely much closer to form.

Today was a good day.

Helloooooo, 2009.

Like most of my friends who have blogs, I seem to have fallen into a blogging malaise. There's no point in writing random stuff just for the hell of it, but then again, life is interesting if you make it so. Or if you're a good storyteller.

So, I'm going to go plunging right in in 2009, to the ultimate storytelling pool... dating.

Yikes!

Since Allen and I split up in mid-2005, I've been more or less single... a doomed foray with an boyfriend from college that mostly did good things for healing my psyche, but otherwise there's been no one. I was all set on January 9 of last year to join up with an online dating service, but guess what? January 10 was the day I got my cancer diagnosis. There's nothing like trying to start a relationship and saying, hey, don't mind me, I'm going to be wiped out from stress and radiation. Never tried it as a pick-up line, but I'm guessing it's not all that successful.

So: October, clean mammogram. Yesterday, clean MRI. Excellent. Time to get off my duff and see what this brave new world looks like.

And while I'm grateful that internet dating has gotten more mainstream, I'd like to deliver a small PSA here.

As a researcher, I certainly believe in the power of statistics. You always have to consider your level of certainty, but they are very useful. So if I were to be out with friends, for instance, I'd be looking for the cutest guy in the room, preferably tall and blond... yeah, that's really good criteria for picking a potential mate. A dating service - particularly a computer-guided one - can consider a lot more criteria and match you up, say, with 65% accuracy. When it comes to humans and their infinite combinations, that's actually a really high percentage.

On the other hand, there's still the part of me looking for the guy who is tall and blond. So I'm telling myself to be more open-minded and remember that this computer has done a better job matching than I would off of that visceral evaluation. Let me get to know your brain...

Anyway, I jumped in last night, and am sorting through "matches" and will undoubtedly have stories to tell in the months ahead, whether it's successful or not. Stay tuned.

In other news, I finished my first 10 speeches in Toastmasters so I am now a Competent Communicator. Good to know that; I'd hate to have thought I was incompetent before. But I'm quite excited to be through it. It feels really good.

And that's about it for this life.